How can I include or reach out to those who experience same-sex attraction in my ward or stake?

Lead by Example

“As a church, nobody should be more loving and compassionate. … Let us be at the forefront in terms of expressing love, compassion, and outreach. … Let’s not have families exclude or be disrespectful of those who choose a different lifestyle as a result of their feelings about their own gender.”

“Clearly the hardest thing that I had when I was stake president … [was] when the medical community first became aware of AIDS, and we had a significant number of our men who found that they had AIDS. Some of them had not been in the Church—a majority of them; a few had—and we found that we had 17 men with AIDS. At that point there was no cure. And all 17 of them ultimately died of AIDS while I was stake president.

“I learned some incredible lessons through that process: That as a [Latter-day Saint] community, it’s a loving and compassionate community. I watched bishops who made incredible sacrifices to take care of some of these young men who were dying. I watched them try very hard to reconnect them with their families and to have their families take care of them. And again, at that time there was no cure and no abeyance of it. I watched them take care of each other. And I watched some of them—one of them comes to mind in particular, who, with a returned missionary and a single incidence of conduct, took it upon himself to take care of the most difficult situations and those that were most ill, and he was the last one to die.

“I think that the lesson that I learned from that is that as a church, nobody should be more loving and compassionate. No family who has anybody who has a same-gender issue should exclude them from the family circle. They need to be part of the family circle” (Quentin L. Cook, “Let Us Be at the Forefront,” ChurchofJesusChrist.org).

Express Love, Compassion, and Outreach

“Do we teach the proclamation on the family? Do we teach Heavenly Father’s plan? Do we teach the first chapter in the second handbook? Yes, we do. We have a plan of salvation. And having children come into our lives is part of Heavenly Father’s plan. But let us be at the forefront in terms of expressing love, compassion, and outreach to those. And let’s not have families exclude or be disrespectful of those who choose a different lifestyle as a result of their feelings about their own gender. … I feel very strongly about this, as you can tell. I think it’s a very important principle” (Quentin L. Cook, “Let Us Be at the Forefront,” ChurchofJesusChrist.org).